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Reasoning for the chosen fields

Initially, the project aimed at revealing biographical aspects such as name, gender distribution, the local origin of party activists (territorial dispersion, and the urban / rural ratio) social origin / area of origin (family data: ethnic origin, religion, wealth, education, brothers / sisters, the political orientation of family members, etc.), school education of leaders, social groups to which they belong (profession gained through regular school education / by practice), marital status, geographical mobility / political experience in the communist movement, criminal records (arrests, convictions).
From these aspects, some essential information was retained in the final sheet: nominal identification (name, surname), date of birth, gender distribution, area of origin, ethnicity, profession and political experience which meant the year of joining the party, positions held, arrests, convictions. Criteria such as education, languages known, family data, marital status were abandoned as archival material recorded these data sporadically.
During this year, the National Archives made ​​available to researchers a new collection of documents, the Collection "Party Files of Party Members with Underground Activity which have passed away”. This complex collection represents a panorama of the entire existence of illegalists, from birth until death, and offers the future possibility to fill in the above mentioned sections.
Given the considerable size of the group, the number of sections, the archival realities, the new data that emerged during the research – on whose existence could not have been counted at the time of the application - and the limited time, the project manager has outlined two possibilities: either narrowing the group and completing all proposed sections, or keeping the original focus group, and narrowing the number of sections, keeping only the biographical information considered relevant for the group.
Finally, the decision was made to maintain the focus group and narrow the number of sections, keeping only the ones deemed to be relevant. This option was considered to better meet the research purposes. Focusing on a smaller number of subjects, which would instead be more fully described, would have reduced the relevance of the final results, owing to the fact that the prosopographical method provides more conclusive descriptions if the group is larger. On the other hand, given the reality that comes from the study of archival documents, the only biographical fields that were kept were those whose identification was possible for a larger number of subjects.
The parameters of the analysis that were kept in the end were considered relevant for two reasons. On the one hand, it would explain some long circulated assumptions such as, for example, the high percentage of foreigners in the Romanian Communist group between the two World Wars (the ethnical parameter), or the fact that the provinces annexed to the Old Kingdom were the main suppliers of followers for RCP (area of ​​origin).
Other biographical fields - gender for instance - would allow to verify the postulate of gender equality, long invoked by the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Analysis based on the criteria of "profession" should clarify to what extent did the Communist propaganda gain followers from the working circles, since these circles were the aim of the propaganda.